


The Last Goodbye

by Requiem



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: (Don't Fear) The Reaper Ending (Cyberpunk 2077), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Discussions of Death and Dying, Established Relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Street Kid V (Cyberpunk 2077)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29277906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Requiem/pseuds/Requiem
Summary: Once the dust from Arasaka Tower settled, Goro found himself with nothing: no leader, no job, no home, and nothing left to live for. And he knew exactly who was to blame: V.
Relationships: Goro Takemura/Male V
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	The Last Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



It wasn't hard to find the man; just about every person on the street knew about the merc named V who'd singlehandedly taken on Arasaka and won. He spent most of his evenings at the Afterlife surrounded by a crowd of his adoring fans, making it not only easy to spot him in the crowd but also follow him without being noticed.

V must have been feeling confident indeed in his newfound status as Legend of the Afterlife if Goro was able to follow him unnoticed all the way back to his new apartment, a luxurious affair that, oddly enough, only came with the standard security measures. Goro would have thought V of all people knew how easy those were to bypass.

V was fast asleep when Goro found him, passed out sideways across the bed big enough for three and then some. He'd only managed to get one shoe off and it looked like he'd also tried to take off his trousers, but they'd been trapped at the ankle by his other shoe.

Goro had never seen him look so vulnerable before, not in all the nights Goro had spent at V's old apartment, and not even when V had been sitting half-dead in the passenger seat as Goro had driven away from everything that had ever meant anything in his life. If he could still laugh, he would at the thought that he'd done that for V, in the hopes that V would have been able to help him rebuild Arasaka. Maybe Arasaka would have stood a better chance if he'd left V in that landfill.

But angry as he was with V, Goro had never been one to deny a worthy opponent an honourable death. And V was still that, if nothing else; Goro had to admit to grudging respect for the courage and skill it must have taken for V to assault Arasaka Tower by himself. But that was where he drew the line; V still had to pay for what he'd done, and nothing less than his life would be acceptable. Goro drew the katana he'd brought for the occasion, and kicked V in the leg to wake him.

V grunted and rolled over on the bed, burying his face in one of the pillows.

Goro could do nothing but stand there dumbly for a few seconds; this was not at all how he'd expected his final encounter with V to go. He considered the merits of trying to wake V again, but V must have been drinking heavily to have fallen into so deep a stupor, and a half-asleep drunk would hardly be able to put up the fight Goro was looking for anyway. He sat down in the chair next to V's bed, and waited.

When the first rays of sunlight began to filter through the breaks in the skyline, V finally stretched and sat up. He looked around the room and blinked a few times before his gaze fell on Goro.

"Hey, Goro." V let out an almighty yawn, not even bothering to cover his mouth. "What're you doing here?" he asked, like seeing Goro in his apartment was an everyday occurrence. Maybe that had once been what they were working towards, but not anymore.

Goro had called V after hearing about the attack on Arasaka Tower, hoping against hope that the mercenary mentioned in the preliminary reports had been anyone but V. There'd been no answer, but Goro had still—foolishly—held on to the belief that V wouldn't betray him like that, only to have the ground collapse beneath his feet when footage from the security cameras had confirmed V's involvement in the attack.

Goro had left a message to tell V they would no longer be partners—in any sense of the word—and that he would seek retribution for the attack. He would have hunted V down immediately after delivering the warning if Hanako-sama had not needed him at her side to aid in taking down Yorinobu while holding up the crumbling foundations of Arasaka. But in the end, Goro had failed her just like he had failed Arasaka-sama, and what remained of his honour demanded one last thing of him before taking himself to task for his failures.

"I am here to make you answer for what you did." Goro unsheathed the katana and stood, laying the sheath against the chair. "I told you I would come."

Goro could in no way have anticipated V bursting into hysterical laughter.

"This is no laughing matter," Goro said for lack of anything else to say. "Draw your weapon."

"You—you're—" V could barely gasp out. When he finally caught his breath, he spread his arms and looked straight at Goro. "Go for it, man."

"Draw your weapon, V." There was a katana hanging on the wall above the bed that Goro had seen V use in combat enough times to know it wasn't purely decorative.

But instead of going for the katana, V reached for something lying on the nightstand. A necklace?

"So here's the thing, right?" V put on the necklace. It was the one with the bullet that the ripperdoc had pulled from his skull. "Johnny and I made a deal with Alt Cunningham's engram: we get her into Mikoshi, she sorts out our body-sharing problem by merging Johnny's engram with hers, then they merrily go off beyond the Blackwall together, and I get my life back. Simple, right? Only, once we get there, she tells me that my body isn't mine anymore. Apparently, the relic's rewritten enough of my DNA that it's now technically Johnny's body. So either I give it up to him for good, or I go back to a body that's going to kill me in about six months."

Six months…the attack on Arasaka Tower happened almost three months ago.

V began to cough so hard Goro wondered if the man was going to die right before his eyes. It'd been what he'd wanted when he'd first set out to find V, but not like this.

"So, yeah," V said when the coughing fit subsided, blood speckled on his lips and more on the hand he'd used to cover his mouth. He wiped his hand on his shirt, uncaring of the red streaks it left behind. "Either this job I'm about to go on kills me, or my body does it the slow and painful way over the next few months. At least, I'd thought those were my only two options until you came along."

Goro lowered his katana. "Why aren't you fighting, V? This is not like you."

"What's there left to fight for?" V ran his hands through his hair, untidy from sleep and longer than he usually kept it, and not in a way that suggested he was purposefully looking to change his hairstyle. "I did it, didn't I? I've got this nice pad, eddies to burn, my own booth at the Afterlife, my name on the lips of everyone in the city. What's there left to fight for?" V's eyes swept Goro up and down, his gaze far more piercing than Goro would have expected from someone so hungover. "You too, huh?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everything you've ever fought for is gone too—not just Saburo this time, but all of Arasaka. What do _you_ have left to fight for?"

 _This_ , Goro wanted to say, but the more V spoke, the more he found that wasn't true any longer. Here they were, two streetrats from the gutter who'd made it to vastly different heights, only to have it all come crashing down on them. Goro had thought he'd go to his last breath defending Arasaka, had let his anger and resentment towards V fester for months, but it was all quickly draining from him at the realisation it would be a hollow victory, especially when V had as little left to lose as he did.

"You know what's funny?" V choked out a humourless laugh. "I went to Arasaka Tower alone because I didn't want any more of my friends to put their lives on the line for my sake, and instead, I ended up killing the one person who probably understood me best, just so I could cling to this shitty existence for a few more months. God, how could I have been so selfish?" V buried his face in his hands.

"V." Goro didn't know what compelled him to do it, but he slowly crossed the room and reached out to put a hand on V's shoulder. "Why didn't you come to me?" he asked, his voice more steady than he felt. "I know Hanako-sama—"

"I didn't know how to make you understand. Still don't." V rolled the necklace between his thumb and forefinger. "We both grew up in the shadows of corporations, but where you wanted nothing more than to be part of them, I spent most of my life wishing someone would knock them down a peg. I just couldn't…I couldn't…"

In the end, V couldn't compromise on his principles any more than Goro could on his. Maybe Goro did understand after all.

"Just do it, Goro." V looked up at him, so wretched that the last vestiges of the anger Goro was holding on to melted into the same hollow exhaustion he saw on V's face. "If killing me will bring you some kind of…closure, I want you to do it. Then at least my death will have some meaning. Just…promise me you'll live. I know I have no right to ask anything of you right now, but I want you to see that there's more to life than just Arasaka. Please, Goro? If you need somewhere to stay, I'll give you the keys to this apartment. Probably won't need it anymore after this job anyway."

There he was: the V that had listened to Goro's complaints about the food in Night City and offered to take him out to dinner; the V that had invited Goro to stay in his apartment after discovering Goro had been living out of his stolen van; the V that had come apart so beautifully under Goro's hands, lit up by the neon lights of Night City streaming through the window. The V that Goro, against all odds, had managed to fall for. The V that was somehow still trying to look out for the man that had come to kill him.

Goro knew defeat when he saw it. "Tell me about this job you are going on."

"You're gonna hate it." V gave Goro a tired grin. "Supposed to hit the casino on the Crystal Palace for its client data later today."

Another strike against Arasaka, then. It should have stung, but with Hanako-sama dead along with Goro's hopes for returning to Arasaka—even if he wanted to return to Yorinobu's Arasaka—there was nothing left for him there. In fact, the only thing he did have left was V, and by the sounds of things, not for very long.

"I will come with you," Goro said before he could regret it.

"You need to watch me die in person that badly?" V asked, looking up at Goro from under his eyelashes.

"No, I will be there to make sure you live. You will come back, and we will find a cure."

"Don't want to kill a dying man, huh?"

"There is no honour in that." Goro was still holding the katana. He retrieved its sheath and put it away with more care than he would usually use to buy himself a few more seconds to consider his next words. "And maybe…maybe this is something I want to do with you. For old times' sake." Goro had worked with others before, but none had been able to read him as well as V had—or so readily agreed to his more risky plans—and he yearned for a return to that easy partnership, even if only for a little while.

"Alright." V was smiling, so softly that Goro could barely stand to look at him. "Let me take a shower, then we can be off." V eased himself off the bed and undressed, leaving a trail of clothes behind him on the way to the bathroom. He paused in the doorway and looked over his shoulder. "Gonna join me?" he asked before leaving the door open behind him.

Goro stared at the open doorway for a few seconds before his fingers reached for the buttons of his shirt. It wasn't like he had anything left to lose, after all.


End file.
